Femi Falana, human rights lawyer,
says those who have cornered the country’s commonwealth should not be allowed
to talk of restructuring.
Falana made the submission on
Wednesday when he delivered a paper at the Mike Okonkwo annual lecture in
Lagos.
According to the lawyer,
restructuring would not guarantee unity or political stability without the
“democratisation of powers.”
He said former Vice-President
Atiku Abubakar who is a leading advocate of restructuring has not addressed the
issue of wealth redistribution.
“The country has always been
restructured by the ruling class and that the current structure was imposed by
the fiat of military dictators. No doubt, the country is ripe for restructuring
or power devolution but it cannot guarantee unity and political stability
without the democratisation of powers and equitable redistribution of the
commonwealth along egalitarian lines,” Falana said.
“Restructuring without the
equitable redistribution of the commonwealth will not promote unity or
political stability.
“A leading PDP presidential
candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has become one of the leading proponents of
restructuring. But his support for restructuring has not addressed the crucial
issue of the redistribution of the national wealth.
“After all, in his capacity as
the nation’s vice-president and chairman of the National Council on
Privatisation, alhaji Abubakar presided over the restructuring of the nation’s
economy through the liquidation of public assets and the privatization of the
commanding height of the economy.
“The nation cannot be seriously
restructured without equitable redistribution of wealth. Therefore, those who
have cornered our commonwealth should not be allowed to talk of restructuring
in vacuo. In other words, the campaign for restructuring should encompass the
decentralization and democratization of political and economic powers which
have been privatised by all factions of the ruling class.”
He said Nigerians must demand an
end to a policy that allows political office holders and civil servants who
constitute less than one percent of the population to continue to allocate 70
percent of the country’s resources to themselves.
“If the federal government could
withdraw $12.4 billion from the foreign reserves to pay questionable external
debts and subsidize the local bourgeoisie with intervention funds running to
trillions of naira it cannot turn round to complain of lack of fund to fix
collapsed social infrastructures, education, health transportation and
agriculture and create jobs for our army of unemployed youths,” Falana said.
“The recovery of the stolen
wealth of the nation from foreign and local thieves should be a collective
battle while the fund recovered from corrupt public officers and their privies
is spent on job creation and fixing of hospitals and schools as well as the
provision of other social services.
“Out of despondency and
disenchantment with the political system some groups of young men and women
have demanded for the balkanization of the country. However, the majority of
members of the ruling class have insisted on restructuring as a basis for the
corporate existence of the country. Religious groups have recommended prayers
as the panacea to the myriad of problems plaguing the nation.”
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